The Storytellers: Poetry, Migration and Social Justice with Jenny Janif MNZM & Esteban A Espinoza
What does it mean to be a storyteller?
For Jenny Janif MNZM and Esteban A. Espinoza, storytelling is not simply about creating something beautiful. It is a way of remembering, healing, confronting injustice and preserving the lives of people whose experiences might otherwise disappear.
In this episode of the Authentic Leadership Podcast, Jenny and Esteban share their creative journeys, their migration to Aotearoa, and the people who shaped their commitment to social justice. Although they come from different parts of the world — Jenny from Fiji and Esteban from Chile — their stories meet in a shared understanding: our histories live only when someone is willing to carry them forward.
Creativity as resistance and recovery
Esteban does not describe himself as an artist. He calls himself a “creative activist.”
He began writing poetry as a teenager during a period of political violence and upheaval in Chile. Following the 1973 military coup, his family was scattered, and the world around him changed dramatically. Poetry gave him a place to express what he was witnessing and feeling when ordinary language was not enough.
After migrating to New Zealand, poetry took on another purpose. It became a way of recovering from some of the wounds he carried with him.
Esteban does not try to control his writing too tightly. He allows a poem to emerge, making only the corrections needed for it to be understood. To him, inspiration can feel like a message arising from the soul. The value of the poem is not determined by whether it is technically perfect, but by whether it gives form to something that needs to be expressed.
Jenny’s creative journey also began long before she called it one. She grew up on Vanua Levu in multicultural Fiji, in a family shaped by different ethnicities, faiths and histories. A fourth-generation Fiji-born woman, she traces her ancestry to British India, Afghanistan, Guyana and the Solomon Islands through the histories of indenture and blackbirding.
Her parents were the custodians of the family’s oral traditions. They were the storytellers who carried memories from one generation to the next. Born into a Muslim household and educated at a Catholic school, Jenny also developed a deep love of books and English literature. Reading opened the world to her and nourished the imagination that would later find expression through poetry, family history and writing about migration.
Carrying stories across borders
Migration is central to both Jenny’s and Esteban’s lives, but neither speaks of it as a simple movement from one country to another.
For Jenny, Fiji’s political upheaval in 1987 became the push factor behind her family’s migration. She describes leaving one’s homeland as a deeply emotional decision: loved ones remain behind, familiar ways of living disappear, and there is no certainty about when families will see one another again.
Aotearoa gave Jenny and her whānau safety and the opportunity to rebuild. Yet rebuilding a life did not mean leaving Fiji behind. Its histories, relationships and cultural inheritance continued to live within her.
This is especially evident in the way Jenny writes about Fiji Indian identity. Broad labels such as “South Asian” can hide the very different histories people carry across the diaspora. For Jenny, India may be an ancestral motherland, but Fiji is her homeland. Her writing affirms people’s right to name their own identity rather than have others define it.
Esteban’s stories also carry the consequences of political upheaval, separation and exile. His writing remembers not only what happened to his own family, but also the people he encountered whose lives were marked by violence, displacement and suffering.
One question repeatedly follows him: who will remember the people who leave behind no photographs, written records or public recognition?
He recalls an older woman in Papatoetoe whose life and imagination were far richer than they first appeared. He also remembers a Chilean survivor of political imprisonment whose suffering continued long after he left Chile. These were people who passed through Esteban’s life and could easily have vanished from collective memory. Writing became his way of acknowledging that they had been here and that their experiences mattered.
The inheritance of their mothers
At the heart of both Jenny’s and Esteban’s stories are formidable mothers.
Esteban grew up watching his mother practise community activism before he understood the term. In a neighbourhood where many families lived in poverty, she organised residents to bring drinking water to their homes, worked with the local council to improve housing and helped women create and sell products to support their families. She later participated in women’s groups and supported people resisting Chile’s dictatorship.
As the youngest child, Esteban accompanied her to meetings, cooperatives and neighbourhood committees. Her example taught him that social justice is not an abstract idea. It is the practical work of bringing people together and using whatever resources are available to improve their lives.
Jenny describes her own mother as a formidable woman and human-rights campaigner. Both of her parents spoke Fiji’s Indigenous iTaukei language, which helped them form relationships and build trust across cultural communities. Through them, Jenny learned that diversity is not merely about recognising difference; it is about entering one another’s worlds with respect and understanding.
Both Jenny and Esteban also grew up without television. Esteban found stories through radio, books read aloud by his brothers, and the worlds he created in his imagination. Jenny discovered the world through reading. Their creativity grew from listening, observing and imagining — a reminder that storytelling begins long before words are placed on a page.
Preserving history while its carriers are still here
As their parents’ generation grows older, storytelling has taken on greater urgency.
Jenny began asking who would preserve the stories of her grandparents, her whānau and everyday life in colonial Fiji once those who remembered it were no longer here. That question inspired a documentary featuring a conversation between her mother and aunt, who recalled growing up during the Second World War and reflected on Fiji Indian history.
Jenny has also spent almost 16 years developing a family project called Migration Stories. Her parents, siblings, niece and son have contributed interviews, reflections and poetry about identity and family history. It is not intended to be an academic account. It does not need to be flawless. Its importance lies in the fact that each person speaks from the heart.
The project honours the resourcefulness of earlier generations and gives future generations a way to know the people and journeys that made their own lives possible.
Esteban understands that urgency too. Looking back, he wishes he had access to today’s technology while his mother was alive. What remains are photographs, brief video recordings, letters, memories and the garden she taught him to tend. His garden in Aotearoa — with its fruit trees, herbs, shade and abundance — has become another form of storytelling. It carries his mother’s presence through the living things she taught him to nurture.
Poetry that names what is difficult to discuss
For Jenny and Esteban, preserving the past does not mean romanticising it. Storytelling must also make space for the injustices that communities sometimes avoid discussing.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, a young woman mentored by Jenny experienced discrimination while trying to enter Auckland Hospital as an authorised support person. Unable to comfort her in person, Jenny invited her to create something from the experience. Together, they wrote a poem titled Fair and Ugly — a deliberate reversal of the name of a skin-whitening product.
The poem confronts what Jenny calls “intra-racism”: discrimination within ethnic communities shaped by colourism, caste and social status. Through poetry, a painful personal experience became a way to open a wider conversation about prejudices that can travel with communities through migration.
Esteban sees this as part of the storyteller’s ancient role. He says that poetry is not prophecy, although the two can appear close. Poets and storytellers notice what may be hidden in front of everyone’s eyes. They give meaning to events, preserve collective knowledge and help societies understand themselves.
Humour also matters. As Jenny observes, humour and metaphor can carry difficult truths without immediately pushing an audience away. They can make sensitive conversations possible.
The essence of Jenny and Esteban
Jenny and Esteban are storytellers, but not because they seek ownership of others’ stories.
They are listeners, witnesses and custodians. They notice the people who might otherwise be forgotten. They honour the struggles of their parents and ancestors. They use creativity to build bridges between cultures, recover what migration and political upheaval have fractured, and question the injustices that remain within and around their communities.
Their work is deeply personal, but it is never only about themselves. Jenny’s writing carries the histories of Fiji, indenture, blackbirding, migration and diaspora into the future. Esteban’s poetry carries the memory of Chile, political struggle, exile and the ordinary people whose lives deserve to be remembered.
Together, they remind us that storytelling is both an inheritance and a responsibility. The forms may change — from oral traditions and handwritten notebooks to WhatsApp messages, documentaries and podcasts — but the human need remains the same: to know where we came from, to understand what others have lived through and to leave something meaningful for those who come after us.
As Esteban reflects, time is fragile. We are here, and then we are gone. What remains are the stories we have taken the time to hear, preserve and pass on.
The Storytellers: Poetry, Migration and Social Justice with Jenny Janif MNZM & Esteban A Espinoza
